A handful of Tigers from 2nd Kompanie SS Schwere Panzer Abteilung 101 halted the advance of the British 7th Armoured Division, The Desert Rats, outside the little Norman village of Villers Bocage. Prowling through the streets of the village, the solitary tank of Hauptsturmfuhrer Michael Wittmann knocked out most of the 4th County of London Yeomanrys regimental HQ Stuart and Cromwell tanks, before falling victim to a 6pdr anti-tank gun. Wittmann survived the battle but was killed a month later on August 8th 1944.

Skillfully led by their mercurial commander, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Michael Wittmann, the Tiger Tanks of s.SS-Pz. Abt. 101 blaze through a shattered French village in the days following D-Day, June, 1944. Their destination – Normandy!

German Army - Knights Cross with Oak Leaves. Oberfeldwebel Albert Kerscher was, like Otto Carius, a panzer ace from schwere Panzer Abteilung 502. He achieved his 100th kill in defending the Neuhauser Forest near Pillau, East Prussia in April 1945. On 22nd July 1944, 1st Lieutenant Otto Carius with his company of eight Tigers advanced towards the village on Malinava (northern suburb of Dunaburg) in order to halt the Russian advance. Carius and Kerscher took a Kubelwagen in order to check if the village was already in Russian hands. They discovered that Malinava had already been taken by the enemy. Carius recognised that the Russian tanks in the village were only advance troops waiting for the main force to arrive. He decided to recapture the village before the arrival of more Russian tanks. Carius returned to his company for briefing and explained his plan to take the village. He decided to attack the village with only two Tigers because there was only one road leading to the village and it meant very risky business. Six Tigers remained in the reserve while the Tigers of Carius and Kerscher moved towards the village of Malinava. Speed was the essence of the plan to take the Russians by surprise and immobilise their tanks. When they were about to enter the village, they could see two T-34/85 tanks rotating their turrets in their direction. Immediately Kerscher, following Carius at about 150 metres, fired two shots in rapid succession, and destroyed the two enemy tanks. This was the first time that Carius had encountered one of the latest JS-1 heavy tanks. The silhouette of the new heavy Russian tank was somewhat similar to that of the Tiger II, and Carius got confused at first but after a little hesitation, ordered his crew to fire at once, and the JS-1 burst into flames. Afterwards they realised that the entire battle was over in about twenty minutes. In such a short time, the two Tigers of Carius and Kerscher had knocked out 17 Russian tanks including the new JS-1. The Russians were taken by surprise and their quick and accurate perception of the situation were the main factors that led the two Tigers to victory. The achievement of Carius and Kerscher at Malinava is on the same level as the famous action of Michael Wittmann at Villers Bocage. He ended the war with a total score of 107. Albert Kerscher passed away on 12th June 2011.

Heinrich Friedrich Carl Metelmann was born on Christmas Day 1922 into a working-class family in Altona, an industrial town near Hamburg. His father, an unskilled railway worker, was a socialist. When Heinrich was 11, his Christian youth group was subsumed into the Hitler Youth, of which he was soon an enthusiastic member. Called up in 1941 when he reached 18, Henry Metelmann was posted to join the 22nd Panzer Division and was in training as Operation Barbarossa commenced in June. Shortly after the Division was sent to the Crimea for the winter of 1941 as part of Mannesteins 11th Army, fighting the first of many tank battles in the early spring of 1942. He took part in the push to the River V, and the approach to Stalingrad. But as they advanced the 1,000 miles towards Stalingrad, Metelmann – who spoke a little Russian – got to know some of the people whose homes he occupied: I fell in love with a Russian girl, although nothing ever came of it, and for the first time I began to doubt our racial superiority. How could I be better than her? His unit was nearly destroyed in the Russian pincer movement at Stalingrad in November 1942, and Metelmann only narrowly avoided being captured. Yet the reversal of the Wehrmacht's fortunes did not lead him to disobey orders. Wounded, he spent time in hospital before rejoining his unit for the Battle of Stalingrad. Detached from his unit during the chaos of the fighting, he walked west for days before crossing back into the German lines. Wounded again, he was captured while defending a small town on the Rhine. but escaped, and in early 1945 was sent to join a Panzer unit in the West defending the Rhine from the advancing US army under General Patton. Taken prisoner, Metelmann was shipped to America, where his turning point came en route to a prison camp in Arizona, when he picked up a magazine showing pictures of the piles of corpses and walking corpses at the newly liberated concentration camps. Metelmann had swallowed Nazi propaganda that the camps were merely places where unsocial elements were made to do a hard day' work. At first I said to my mates: 'Look, just because we lost the war, they blame us for everything.' But when he studied the pictures more closely he realised that they were not fabrications. Later Metelmann was transferred to England, where he remained a PoW until 1948, working as a farm labourer in Hampshire. By the time he returned to Germany, his parents were dead (his mother from Allied bombing). After just four weeks he returned to the farm in Hampshire, where was given his old job back. Later he took a job as a railway signalman and, on his retirement in 1987, Charterhouse offered him a job as groundsman. While several of Metelmann's old army comrades committed suicide, Metelmann joined the Communist Party and CND and became a committed peace activist. In the 1960s he protested against the Vietnam War. In recent years he attended all the Stop the War marches against the invasion of Iraq and protested against the American bombing of Afghanistan. Henry Metelmann died on July 24th 2011.

Born in Konigsberg, Karl-Heinz Decker joined the German army in 1943, trained as a tank crewman and transferred to the 12th Waffen SS Panzer Division in Belgium in 1944. Staying with this elite unit in France during the Allied invasion he fought throughout the Normandy campaign, on D-Day, at Falaise and was eventually taken PoW.

Latest info : After spending most of 2008 and first part of 2009 working on a series of Star Wars painting, all of which have been sold, David has since been working on a series of original pencil drawings. At the time of writing, the first 30 or so are available. All of the drawings carry original signatures of German Knights Cross holders and a selection have been matted to include the signatures of other, now deceased, Knights Cross holders. Most of these original pencil drawings have also been produced as very limited edition art prints.

One of Europe's Leading Military and Aviation Artists, David Pentland has produced a wealth of Paintings for Cranston Fine arts, who are proud to have David as one of their leading Artists. As you browse down his wonderful work you may be interested to know that many of the Paintings are still available, and to a collector his work would certainly be a valuable addition. David's Paintings have gone up in value over the past 2 years, and have seen a growth in value of nearly 100%.

David with one of his original paintings in the originals gallery at Cranston Fine Arts, and at a print signing session with a print of one of his pencil drawings.

From an early age, young Richard Taylor had shown an exceptional ability to draw. Not surprising perhaps, having been brought up in a family where fine art drawing, painting, print publishing, gallery receptions and art exhibitions pervaded daily life, but in his case a quite unusual talent was obvious to all who saw his work. A future somewhere in the world of art seemed undoubted, though exactly where didn't become clear to Richard until he completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design at Bath Spa University College. He excelled during his academic years, producing a remarkable body of creative illustrative work that was clearly leading him towards the world of fine art painting. Under the watchful guidance of his father Robert, Richard's skills were fast maturing to a standard where local galleries started exhibiting his paintings and drawings and he found himself immersed in commissions for friends, and soon, friends of friends, depicting images ranging from automobiles to wildlife. No matter what the subject area, like any determined young artist, Richard took it all in his stride. But deep down, his heart always lay with his passion for aircraft, and things mechanical - as his father says it must be in the genes. Richard Taylor is a young talent not to be ignored. His abounding enthusiasm for painting aircraft, and the distinctive natural flair of this young professional artist is clearly demonstrated in this, his very first aviation painting to be issued as a limited edition.